Orthodox Christians begin and end the liturgical year with celebrations dedicated to the Virgin Mary, whom we venerate as the Theotokos or “bearer of God.” On September 8, the end of the first week of the new year, we...
A devastating cartoon appeared recently in our local paper. The caption reads: “The New Sacrament.” It depicts a somber and stately Episcopal church, with stained glass windows and cathedral ceiling. The view is from the...
Two recent cases illustrate the difficulty—and often the agony—experienced by family members and medical teams when they have to decide whether or not to remove life-support from an apparently dying patient.
This past...
Some questions never go away, even those we think we’ve answered once and for all. One of those questions concerns the beginning of human life: when we as human beings actually come into existence. This is a biological...
Life in Christ is made up of countless small yet touchingly beautiful miracles.
Throughout the afternoon I had been reading some recent reflections by a variety of bioethicists on the possibilities and apprehensions...
The phone rang right at suppertime. An hysterical voice on the other end started berating me for not listening to her, for abandoning her in her most dire need, for not really hearing her confession, for being self-centered...
There seems to be an unbridgeable gap between the richness of Orthodox tradition regarding “prayer of the heart” and the poor prayer that is part of our personal experience. Prayer of the heart requires “hesychia,” a deep...
A young Orthodox priest had just arrived in the hospital waiting room to minister to a grieving family. He talked for a while with the oldest member, a man in his late sixties who was struggling to come to terms with his...
With the U.S. Senate voting overwhelmingly to ban the late-term procedure known as “partial birth abortion,” we are led, as Christians in a highly secular and pluralistic society, to look once again at the implications of...
Orthodox Christianity calls us to live on two different but intimately related levels. One is the level of daily experience: life in family and on the job, paying bills and doing the shopping, cutting the grass and getting...